Auguste Comte

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Social positivism only accepts duties, for all and towards all. Its constant social viewpoint cannot include any notion of rights, for such notion always rests on individuality.

Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte (17 January 1798 – 5 September 1857) was a French philosopher who coined the terms "sociology" and "altruism".

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- 1.1 The Postive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (1853)
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3 Quotes about Comte
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To understand a science it is necessary to know its history.
- A Course of Positive Philosophy (1832 - 1842) [Six volumes]

Social positivism only accepts duties, for all and towards all. Its constant social viewpoint cannot include any notion of rights, for such notion always rests on individuality. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. These obligations then increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service. ... Any human right is therefore as absurd as immoral. Since there are no divine rights anymore, this concept must therefore disappear completely as related only to the preliminary regime and totally inconsistent with the final state where there are only duties based on functions.
- Le Catéchisme positiviste (1852)

Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?
- As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) by Alan Lindsay Mackay

Foreknowledge is power.
- As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) by Alan Lindsay Mackay

[edit] The Postive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (1853)

The Postive Philosophy of Auguste Comte Freely Translated and Condensed by Harriet Martineau in Two Volumes (1853) - (1896 edition in the Cornell University Library Historical Monographs Collection

After Montesquieu, the next great addition to Sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet, proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot.
- Book VI : Social Physics, Ch. II : Principle Philosophical Attempts to Constitute a Social System

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The dead govern the living.

[edit] Quotes about Comte

Catholicism minus Christianity.
- T. H. Huxley, on the ideas of Comte.

M. Comte, in particular, whose social system, as unfolded in his Systeme de Politique Positive, aims at establishing (though by moral more than by legal appliances) a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers.
- John Stuart Mill